In which the pond must wade through the bromancer and some chatter about religion to get to the Mein Gott point of the day ... a world without competition.

 

It's a measure of the pond's boredom with the reptiles that the pond has of late been binging on a YouTube channel dedicated to the sociopathic antics of the Russian TV commentariat in service to their master, the sociopathic Vlad the Impaler.

Talk about promises to cleanse the earth of everyone and everything apart from noble Russians ... 

Why it seems designed to make the reptiles at the lizard Oz seem passingly normal ... and more than a tad tedious, and the tedium and ennui continued today...

Luckily the reptiles decided to keep Dame Slap at the moment the pond took the screen cap, because the pond would have in any case red carded her ...

Why doesn’t the WA Supreme Court take open justice seriously?,There are many things I would like to tell you about the Linda Reynolds v Brittany Higgins defamation battle. But the West Australian Supreme Court won’t allow it. Not yet.

It's the first time the pond can recall a Supreme Court doing a service to humanity by blocking Dame Slap rabbiting on about matters arising from the Lehrmann matter ...

The pond also red carded simpleton "here no conflict of interest" Simon for his empathetic reasons for avoiding Captain Spud's racist dogwhistling... Living standards won’t be fixed by what happens in Gaza, Visas for Gazans are now an issue of the PM’s character. And at the moment it is being decimated, but Peter Dutton will have to return to the main concern: the cost of living.

Yeah, forget about Gaza, and let's talk about real suffering, you know the bombing of CBDs across the country, and such like.

Oh and the suffering of the NSW Liberals ...

Forced to abandon legal action? Say it ain't so ...

These days the pond talks itself out of paying attention as quickly as a Liberal can be talked out of legal action...

Take Mark Fowler's effort, Is religious discrimination reform to die without a whimper?, The deep societal shifts driving the fractious religious freedom debate remain unrelenting. They are likely to press both major parties to declare commitments in the lead-up to the next election.

Go on, someone, take it. 

The pond was put off immediately by the visual assault on its senses contained therein ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, what was she wearing?

Suddenly the scales fell from the pond's eyes and the meaning of this day's infallible Pope became clear ...

Oh okay, the pond should offer something, even if Fowler's name reminds the pond of the cruel taunts that name would have produced in Tamworth, an endless defaming of chooks ...

Anthony Albanese has confirmed he will not follow through on his election commitment to introduce a religious discrimination bill and reforms to protect staff and students in religious schools.

Is the reform effort that first began in earnest with Philip Ruddock’s expert panel on religious freedom in 2018 and senator Penny Wong’s 2018 bill to protect students to die with a whimper?

The deep societal shifts driving the fractious religious freedom debate remain unrelenting. They are likely to press both major parties to declare commitments in the lead-up to the next election. What form should those commitments take?

Progress on the reforms stalled when Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus sought line-by-line feedback from his opposition counterpart, Michaelia Cash, who in turn directed Dreyfus’s attention to detailed drafting provided by faith leaders.

As The Australian reported, this drafting included amendments to the proposed religious discrimination bill and provisions of the Sex Discrimination Act regulating the treatment of students and staff in religious schools.

Sky News Political Editor Andrew Clennell discusses the Shadow Attorney-General Michaelia Cash walking out of a meeting with Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus regarding the religious discrimination legislation. “They can’t even agree on what happened,” Mr Clennell told Sky News host Peta Credlin. “This shows what chance the religious freedom bill has on getting up.”

On the first, protection of people against religious discrimination remains the missing piece in the constellation of Australian equality legislation. Of the five main equality rights recognised in the international law to which Australia is a signatory – being race, age, disability, sex (including sexual orientation) and religion – only religion fails to receive dedicated protection in federal law. In its Universal Periodic Review of Australia, the UN Human Rights Council called on Australia to address this deficiency, as did the 2018 expert panel.

In the absence of that law, the government can refuse funding to an Islamic childcare operator on the basis of their faith under federal law; a Catholic priest can be lawfully turned out of a cafe for wearing the dog collar; a Hindu can be told there is no place for “someone who believes in things so different” in the football team.

These are examples provided with the previous government’s religious discrimination bill. They remain lawful under federal law.

The previous government consulted extensively on its religious discrimination bill. While religious leaders expressed broad support for the final of its four versions, they held a range of remaining concerns. The Australian reports that the proposed reform model provided to Dreyfus and Cash by Catholic archbishops Peter Comensoli and Anthony Fisher draw on these concerns by seeking to ensure judges cannot assume the role of theologian.

In what was reported to be a similar plan to that proposed by the Anglican Church, they also sought to ensure religious believers did not lose the protections of the bill simply because they associated together in incorporated bodies.

The Prime Minister has expressed his desire to pass religious discrimination protections in a way that “brings Australians together”. Bipartisan agreement should ensure these lacunae in federal protections are addressed. Albanese also is reported to have said to religious leaders in April that under his prime ministership the nation would go forward, not backwards, on religious freedom.

However, the Catholic archbishops described the government’s separate proposal for reform of the Sex Discrimination Act, presumably based on the recommendations of the Australian Law Reform Commission, as presenting a “real and substantial reduction in existing freedoms”.

ALRC report author judge Stephen Rothman fatally undermined its recommendations shortly after its release. He clarified that the terms of reference imposed a “major constraint” and instead posited that “religious education institutions, despite the provisions of the Sex Discrimination Act or any other discrimination legislation, or any law, written or unwritten, commonwealth or state, should be able to discriminate in favour of, or preference, on the basis of the person’s adherence to or belief in the genuinely held religion, beliefs or tenets of the religious education institution”.

The now revealed position of the faith leaders draws on Rothman’s “positive right” to assert two key propositions. First, religious schools would be able to preference employees who share their religious beliefs. This would focus the law on fidelity and auth­enticity to religious belief, not the presence or absence of any particular protected characteristic under discrimination legislation.

Second, in respect of students, schools could not discriminate against a student because they are gay but instead would be enabled to respond to conduct that would undermine their ethos. If that is correct, the model would implement the bipartisan commitment to remove discrimination against students.

The Australian reported Cash’s letter to Dreyfus in which she stated: “Faith leaders have put clear options on the table to honour the Prime Minister’s commitment and balance the various competing interests at play.” She asserted the options “would not only protect faith-based schooling but also address concerns around the drafting of existing provisions on the commonwealth statute book”. If that is the case, the religious leaders have set out the path to bipartisan agreement.

But for these long-anticipated protections to pass into law, the politics must be taken out of the issue. Can principled politicians with the mettle to traverse that path be found, before the coming election or after? In the timeless words of poet Robert Frost, “I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference.”

Mark Fowler is principal of Fowler Charity Law.

The pond notes that Fowler is a lawyer and that might help explain some of the splendid legalese and verbal gymnastics,, which reaches a peak with ...

...in respect of students, schools could not discriminate against a student because they are gay but instead would be enabled to respond to conduct that would undermine their ethos. If that is correct, the model would implement the bipartisan commitment to remove discrimination against students.

You boy, stop that prancing, and you JD, enough with the eyeliner already ...

Talk about undermining the ethos, and that mention of the US reminded the pond that the bromancer had given old Joe an exceptionally fond farewell, of a kind only the bromancer could offer ...

As usual, the bro hedged his bets by opening with a little both siderist flourish that also embraced the mango Mussolini, though that was quickly forgotten ...

The trouble with Joe Biden, and with Donald Trump, is they are two old men who never forget anything. They never learn anything either. And much that they remember is distorted. But they love nothing better than to talk of themselves and their respective glorious pasts.
Joe Biden’s speech to the Democratic National Convention was a rolled gold reason why the Democrats were right to get rid of him off the top of their ticket.
It was also the most Trump-like of all his speeches, in that it went on forever, it was longer than pain, Fidel Castro-like in the endurance test it set its listeners.
No cliche was left unmolested and it was all about Joe.
“Only in America could a boy with a stutter and of modest means end up sitting behind the Resolute Desk,” he remarked in one of the paeans of praise to himself.
Only in America? John Major ran away to the circus. Anthony Albanese grew up in a housing commission unit with his unmarried and disabled mum. Paul Keating went to work full time before he finished high school. Margaret Thatcher was a grocer’s daughter.
In any event, Biden had a perfectly comfortable middle class upbringing. But it is one of the standard tropes of almost all American politics that you have to claim a log-cabin origin story, that you were under-privileged and subjected to disadvantage, prejudice etc.
Barack Obama was raised by his bank manager grandmother and hard-working granddad, went to Hawaii’s best private school and then Harvard and still managed a remarkably self-pitying, and immensely successful, memoir.
Of course, nobody does schmaltz as schmaltzily as Joe Biden does.
We heard once more about how once he was told he was too young to be a senator, then that he was too old to be president.
The crowd roared: “Thank you, Joe”, the unspoken second half of which thought was: “it’s time to go!”
In an emotional speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, President Joe Biden delivered what felt like a farewell address, reflecting on his presidency and passing the torch to a new generation. As Biden teared up, Kamala Harris took the stage with growing confidence, buoyed by rising poll numbers.
Remarkably, Biden did speak in a strong voice and mostly read all the words on the teleprompter, with relative fluency.
Whatever the stage of his cognitive challenges, he seems to speak better when he shouts. And everyone shouts in these convention speeches.
He did have the odd nice thing to say about Kamala Harris “the best decision I ever made”. And he claimed, wholly untruthfully, not to be angry at all those Democrats who told him to step down.
According to Biden, and these passages were very Trumpy, his one term in office was the greatest period of advancement in US history. The economy is the world’s best. America leads the world. Europe loves America. NATO loves America. All Americans are better off, thanks to him. And, key Democrat policy commitment of all, he would champion abortion, everywhere and in every circumstance, as, of course, will Kamala.
Naturally, Biden didn’t solve the seeming contradiction between such magnificent, historical success and the fact he was heading for a landslide defeat against Trump.
It was nonetheless a unified party convention that showcased a lot of enthusiasm. But Hillary Clinton and all the other liberal feminists celebrating the identity politics moment represented by Harris’s candidacy? I’m not sure. It has a touch of 2016 about it.
And, of course, no one could mention any of the policies of Bill Clinton’s presidency – welfare reform, balanced budget, anti-crime bill.
The party’s gone a long, long way left since then.
Joe didn’t lead it. He rode it. Now he’s made a relatively elegant dismount and can disappear into the sunset.
So long, Joe.

So much ambivalence, so little time, and how the bromancer yearns for the days of 2016 and the glorious reign of the mango Mussolini.

And with the bromancer done and dusted, at last the pond can turn to the real inspiration for the day, though it was rushed out yesterday ... 

Mein Gott, why do the reptiles treat Mein Gott so badly?

Dear sweet long absent lord, what an outrage.

The pond is right behind Mein Gott on this one. 

There's simply too much competition in the world ... not to mention too many snaps in his piece, with the snap of the ANU campus particularly egregious and pointless ...

Mein Gott, put the snaps aside, a new non-competitive world is dawning ...

Flexibility and increased competition??!!

We'll have none of that undermining of the ethos if you please.

Mein Gott, surely the mantra should be Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen (or if you will), From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

Indeed, indeed, just think of a world without the tooth and claw of rampant capitalism. 

Think of the soothing benefits of monopolies, perhaps even state ownership. Mein Gott, he might just be starting a revolution ...

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

Who knew mein Gott was inclined to that way of thinking? Did the reptiles realise he might undermine their ethos?

Just asking for a friend...

Imagine no possessions, no patents, no non-compete clauses

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man (sisterhood will come later)

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world

You

You may say Mein Gott's a dreamer

But he's not the only one

He hopes someday you'll join us in a non-compete world

And the world will live as one

And so to the final gobbet in the new reptile campaign to abolish competition and produce a new world order that might even appease the sociopaths on Russian television...

With mein Gottism in place, wouldn't these chaps cop a dinkum licking?

And now, purely because the pond wasn't satisfied with the bromancer's farewelling of old Joe, a word from the WSJ ...

Indeed, indeed, and after the mango Mussolini left the county in tip top shape ...

There were a few snaps, lacking that mango Mussolini sense of unity and purpose ...

What need of furriners when you have a country pulling together?

What a legacy, and what a pitiful contrast these last few years ... and don't you worry about the Republicans killing off a bipartisan border bill on the orders of the mango Mussolini, to help his election chances. That's an abject mystery to the WSJ mob ...

Those asterisks were a prelude to a snap of the man who has been the real president of the United States these last four years, the man from whom the election was stolen, the Messiah, ready to return and embrace the country the way he might embrace a flag or a pussy ...

Oh yes, the Martyr ... and so to a last gobbet of mourning for what might have been...

Indeed, indeed, it turns out that the Donald and MAGA and all that have nothing to do with Faux Noise or the GOP, it's all the fault of jolly old Joe ...

And so to the real reason the pond indulged the WSJ mob ... what better excuse, what better segue for the immortal Rowe of the day?

As always, it's in the detail, and so many pleasing details, with this detail a particularly pleasing detail ...